Foods in Bali

Here's the "Eat" part of the Eat Pray Love book and movie. Not only do people come here to pray and love but there is also a crowd that come here for the food. I am admittedly a meat and potato person so I didn't think I would ever in my wildest dreams willingly go to a raw vegan restaurant and it happened with Cathy and Becky doing the coaxing. Did you know that raw vegan restaurants don't even have ovens? Here's what we had-

On the right is a cold quiche made with no pastry or egg or ham or cheese. That's because everything is raw. It's nothing that I could possibly describe as far as taste but the lettuce beside it tasted like a salad.

The top plate they called cannelloni but there was no pasta or cheese or meat and it wasn't cooked because- per above- raw vegans don't cook (I wonder if it's a lazy thing?) The pretend pasta was sliced zucchini. 

And the plate on the left was what they called pizza. Instead of pizza dough, the base was some kind of flax seed crust and green crap and the toppings I'm not even going to guess at (I told Becky that she will never- ever- have time with me in a raw vegan restaurant again in my lifetime).

To make up for this disaster, we went to a Bali cooking class and had some excellent food:

                                

 

For appetizers we did a mixed cooked vegetable Sayur Urab (something I could eat), then sweet and sour Tempe (even though it was Tofu I ate it all), Tuna with Sambal Matah (raw sauce), Bali Satay and Balinese Chicken Curry (like a sweet and sour) with Black Rice Pudding for dessert.

The sauce and spices were fabulous. It's different than Indian, Thai or Vietnamese spices and really tasty. 

The food is quite reasonable price-wise. The downside is that beer is the preferred drink, wine is not generally available (probably due to the heat and importing it in) and you have to look at menus before going in for sparkling water versus soda water.

Next up- Singapore